This really is the monitor that does it all! What puts this monitor heads and shoulders above the rest is the activity sensor pad that goes under baby’s mattress and monitors for lack of movement—a helpful enhancement for tracking baby’s breathing during those scary SIDS months. Once baby grows past that stage, breathe a sigh of relief, but don’t throw the monitor out with the bathwater, because the Angelcare AC517 also comes with both an audio and a video monitor! What more could you ask for?
Image and audio quality: We wanted a high enough resolution to make out facial features in the dark, at more than a few feet of distance, and (obviously) in daylight as well. The screen itself did not need to be incredibly high-resolution, but we wanted a size that would be easily visible on a nightstand. For all monitors, but especially audio-only options, we wanted to be able to hear everything clearly at the lowest volumes.
The video and audio quality of the Keera are among the best in our comparison, allowing you to see and hear events clearly. We also like that you can remotely reposition the camera if your child moves out of sight. Despite its strengths, the Levana Keera couldn't surpass Infant Optics and Philips Avent in our rankings due to some noticeable flaws. For example, we experienced a few dropped connections and degraded video quality at a distance during our tests. It also had the shortest battery life of the video baby monitors we tested. Lastly, we had trouble controlling the device due to an odd mix of physical buttons and a touch panel.
There are many factors to consider when purchasing a video monitor for your child. These products range in price from around $40 up into the hundreds, and they come with a variety of features, such as WiFi connectivity, dual cameras, long-range monitoring and more. The following is a breakdown of the top video baby monitors available and the best features of each option.
The price of the Infant Optics, at about $150, is on the higher end for baby monitors. As much as we wanted to recommend a more affordable option, we found their shortcomings to be major enough—terrible video quality and poor connections were common—that we couldn’t recommend one. The Infant Optics offers a better value even though it’s among the more expensive options out there. Many people use these daily for years, which helps justify the investment, and the reports of reliable customer service from other customers are reassuring. If you have to spend less, go audio-only.

The Nanit couldn’t be more perfect for analytical types. The camera—when placed just so—uses computer vision to watch your baby’s every move, and then tell you what it means. You get a notice on your phone, which acts like a handheld monitor, when your child is awake, acting fussy or has fallen asleep. The Nanit also assigns a sleep score to each night based on how many hours your child was actually crashed out. Other stats include how many times you went into your child’s room and how long it took for your little one to fall asleep. Because the Nanit streams live video and audio to your phone, you can also check in on your kiddo when you’re away from home. It also has a nightlight and temperature and humidity sensors.

Summer Infant has been making high-quality, reliable baby monitors for many years. One problem with the Summer Infant monitors is that it's difficult to figure out which one has the features and quality you want, given the very wide range of options. Some are much better than others, and this is definitely one of the better ones we've tested. This color baby monitor has a high-quality 5" high resolution LCD display, which is a similar quality to the Project Nursery monitor in terms of color, contrast, and brightness. When we first got our hands on this, we were excited that maybe it was a nice wide angle panorama camera. But it turns out what they meant by "panorama" is that you can remotely tilt, pan, and zoom. The panning does go nice and wide, allowing you to swing the camera side to side about 180-degrees. But the camera angle itself is no different than the other monitors on this list. That being said, this is a great baby monitor with some great features. In addition to being able to remotely pan, tilt, and zoom the camera, some of the best features were: 1) a subtle night light that you can turn on/off remotely, and can choose it to glow with a soft blue or red color, 2) a sensor that tells you the temperature of your baby's room at all times, 3) a sound-activated light bar on the top of the receiver that tells you when there's noise in the room (even when volume is off). We thought the big hand-held unit was great, with a convenient kick-stand to put it anywhere in the house, great battery life, and good range. We were able to walk around in the backyard with this unit and still get a good, stable image. Note that you can add an extra camera to this, and it will cycle through the two cameras automatically (it does not do split-screen to see both at once). Downfalls? Well, the night vision isn't quite as good as with higher-ranked monitors on this list, and even the lowest volume level seemed really loud for sleeping parents. Also, even though the screen is nice and big, the digital video quality is sub-par relative to several other options on this list. Overall, this is a great addition to our best baby monitor list, as it has great features and falls in the middle of the price range. For about the same price, we'd go with the Infant Optics or Samsung option, unless you value the larger screen size.
The HelloBaby might be a standard monitor, but it excels at the basics. It scored better than some of the more expensive WiFi monitors in picture clarity, and was hands-down the easiest to use. Just open the box, plug in the two devices, and you’re ready to go. No difficult packaging to tear through, and no account setup or device pairing necessary. Our testers had it up in running in less than 3 minutes each time.
Using the speaker, you can tell the Project Nursery camera to pan and tilt, play a lullaby, check the temperature in the nursery and more. You can do all this from any room that has an Alexa-powered speaker, so that you don't need to enter the nursery and risk waking up your sleeping baby. If you already own an Echo speaker, Project Nursery sells the Alexa-enabled camera on its own.
This monitor is known for its zoom lens, included in the box, that lets you see your baby up close even if you have to position it farther away from the crib. You can use the monitor to remotely adjust the camera, and you don’t have to worry about plugging the monitor in overnight—it can sit on your nightstand for up to 10 hours in the power-saving mode (similar to sleep mode on your computer, but it still provides sound monitoring while the display is off) and up to six hours with the display screen constantly on.